1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an information receiving apparatus and the method. The invention may be used to a receiver and the receiving method that receives the broadcast signal transmitted from a broadcast station to display on a monitor an image related to the received broadcast signal.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a broadcast station gives a broadcast service by using an analog type broadcast signal transferred on a grand wave, and the broadcast station transfers own broadcast program within a predetermined frequency band that is assigned to the broadcast station itself.
A broadcast receiver (is called as IRD: Integrated Receiver Decoder) that is located in a viewer's home selects a desired broadcast program on a desired channel from a plurality of programs on a plurality of channels corresponding to the channel selecting operation, and then the receiver decodes the selected broadcast program on the selected channel to display on a monitor.
By the way, in the analog type ground wave broadcast system, it is proposed that predetermined one of broadcast stations delivers electronic broadcast program guide information (such as broadcast program data table) for all broadcast stations. This electronic broadcast program guide information is called as an EPG (Electronic Program Guide) data and delivered regularly once a week or a month, for example. This EPG data includes a title of a broadcast program, a channel number for the broadcast program, a broadcast time of the broadcast program and explanation of the broadcast program and so on.
The viewer (listener) is able to decide favorite one of broadcast programs to watch based on the EPG (Electronic Program Guide) information for broadcast programs displayed on the display screen of the monitor.
In this case, the IRD receiver regularly receives this EPG data transmitted from the predetermined broadcast station, and stores thus received EPG data in a memory of the IRD receiver. Thus memorized EPG data is read out from the memory by the operation of the viewer (listener) and is displayed on the display screen of the monitor.
The viewer (listener) checks or searches the displayed EPG data on the display screen and decides one or more of the broadcast program to watch.
By the way, as the EPG data contains a plenty of broadcast program information of various broadcast stations, the display screen of the monitor for the IRD receiver can not display all of these EPG data at a time because of the limited size of the display screen of the monitor.
Accordingly, the viewer (listener) has to scroll or change the displayed image of the EPG data in order to find out favorite broadcast program among various broadcast programs. This scrolling operation or changing the displayed image operation is very complex and tiresome to the viewer (listener).
In order to avoid such complex operation upon finding the favorite broadcast program, a keyword search processing is proposed to search the favorite broadcast program information from a plenty of the broadcast information that includes the EPG data by setting a search condition and to display the result of searching on a monitor.
In this case, the IRD receiver executes the search processing to the EPG data stored in the memory, so that the viewer (listener) has to set keywords again every time when the EPG data is updated once a week, for example. This keyword setting operation is also complex and tiresome to the viewer (listener).
Further the conventional IRD receiver can only set a single search key such as “Drama” or “Movie” and the search result tends to include relatively large number of broadcast programs hit by the search processing using a single search key. In this case, the viewer (listener) still has to find favorite programs while scrolling search result image displayed on the display screen of the monitor.